Last week, we said “good-bye” to the house we’ve lived in for the past four years.  It’s a small, perfectly rectangular duplex that has always reminded me of a specific vehicle from Star Wars.  The first floor that we called “home” was much less than the advertised 900 square feet and was originally designed to house a printing press about 100 years ago.  The windows were so old that you couldn’t open them without showering yourself in paint chips, and it cost hundreds of dollars to keep the place from becoming unbearably cold in the winter.  The floors often squeaked loud enough to wake sleeping babies.  There was no bathtub, but there were lots of ladybugs.  The garage door could only be lifted by someone capable of squatting and pressing a couple hundred pounds, but the garage was too small to fit anything larger than a bicycle anyways, so it didn’t really matter.

But, it was our home, and, somehow, we will really miss this place.  It is, after all, the place where we brought home both of our children–the only earthly home they’ve ever known.  We will miss being three blocks from the Mississippi River and all of its trails.  We will miss mowing Mr. and Mrs. Johnson’s lawn in the summer and shoveling their sidewalks in the winter.  We will miss playing in the sandbox and sink-hole with our neighbors.  Mostly, we will miss our neighbors.

We’ve come to learn that the life that we’ve chosen to live is one of constant transition.  As soon as you settle in one place and begin to associate it with “home,” you uproot and move onto the next place.  While this comes with obvious challenges (Violet cried and clung to the couch when we gave it to Uncle Chris, “My couch, Daddy!”), it also comes with a clear, sweet reminder.  It’s an object lesson to us and our children that this world is not our home.  You can and, to some extent, must settle in certain places for certain seasons, but we will not permanently settle in until Jesus Christ comes back.

Here is what Jesus says in John 14:1-3, “Let not your hearts be troubled.  Believe in God; believe also in me.  In my Father’s house are many rooms.  If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”

Our hearts are not troubled, because our Father has a house with room for us.  Jesus Christ is there now, preparing a place.  He is coming again.  When he does, he will take us with him, to be with him forever.  Then, we will put our roots down deeply and not take them up again. This is a home we can starting sinking our roots into now–we have a home that comes with us wherever we go, and we never have to leave.  His name is Jesus Christ.

We had lots of help with the move.  Thank you to all those who pitched in–Grandma, Grandpa, Nana, Ben, Malia, Joel, Lev, Lizzie, Moriah, Trevor, Scott, Brad, Eliot, the Foursome Fine Men’s Apparel truck.

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